After Olivia left my office, I went back to my work, the incomprehensibly complex (not really) task of managing transmitter A5. When I told Olivia that no one would touch me, I absolutely meant it. I may not be indispensable to this operation here, but I was a really, really important cog. There was a reason why I was still sitting in my office after all these years. Olivia could never understand why though, and that's because as a soldier, she was simply not taught the finer details of what I did. Some history is necessary for that understanding.

Back, lets say, a hundred odd years ago, give and take a couple of decades, a bunch of scientists were working on a project to determine the existence of extraterrestrial life. By that time, no one really bothered about that particular project. Funding was low and a pack of dead enders were assigned to pretend that they were doing something useful. Their lab comprised off various hand me downs and casts offs that no one wanted. Most importantly though, those scientists had in their possession a high powered radio transmitter and a barely functioning radar that had been salvaged from an air traffic control system.

To cut a long story short, those guys began firing off 'Hello ET' messages into outer space with their transmitter. For years nothing came out of it, but one day, the radar began picking up a reply coming from an indeterminate location. Everyone thought it was a prank and pretty much ignored the incoming reply. It didn't help that when the reply was fed into a computer to be transcribed, all that came up was a steaming pile of junk data.

It was only after a random intern came to the conclusion that there was a legitimate message behind the junk data that real progress began to be made. Our intern believed that the message was simply heavily encrypted and decided to crack the code as a challenge. And crack it he did. It took several months of effort and five burned out computers, but our man did it.

Oh, it also cost him his sanity, but most people prefer not to talk about that part of the story.

So one morning, when the actual scientists opened up the lab for another day of pretending to work, they found their intern at his desk foaming in the mouth, completely raving mad. And the message he deciphered simply read, "FAITH. PRAYER."

Everyone was naturally freaked out by this turn of events and very nearly decided to shut down the entire project. But one of the scientists made a fateful suggestion. Why don't we just send a generic harmless prayer as requested back to the mystery sender? No harm in that right? After all our intern going crazy has nothing to do with the experiment itself. Everyone else in the lab had been exposed to the message for ages and were perfectly fine.

The scientists transmitted a prayer asking for more funding, just a bit of harmless fun. A lighthearted joke in response to the prankster. And when a packet of junk data came back after the message was sent, the scientists went about trying to break the encryption.

This time the process took five fried computers and the sanity of five scientists. When the message was fully deciphered, it turned out that it was a mere one word response. GRANTED. That's all it said. It was also the only thing those 5 deranged scientists could say after they were locked up in the insane asylum.

Granted. Granted. Granted.

But the prayer was granted. And the existence of god had been proven.

....

No one knew why the divine had chosen to reach out like this to mortals. Well, I do, but that's because of my, uh, unique circumstances. But that's all beside the point. The experiments showed that prayer worked, its just without the assistance of a properly configured transmitter, there was no guarantee the gods could hear you.

Yes, gods. Shortly after the success of the experiment, the planet began getting bombarded with these packets of junk data, all uniquely configured. Once deciphered, the messages were all the same, invitations to faith and prayer. All from different entities. Nevertheless , a serious problem remained.

Sending prayers was now no longer an issue. The problem was how to safely receive whatever blessing the gods had decided to write back with. Not that they always responded. Deciphering the return messages still invariably sent the person doing it insane. Furthermore, you could not actually get any benefits from prayer until you actually unraveled the return message. It was as if the world had returned to the days of human sacrifice. Work on the project still continued though, along with the frying of brains and computers. The promised rewards were just too great to let go.

The surviving scientists first tried further automating the deciphering process. If a computer could handle the job, why risk a human? Unfortunately, no computer could ever crack a junk data packet completely by itself. Some degree of input from a living, breathing person was always required. There was some degree of merit to this approach though. By limiting but not completely eliminating human involvement, the chances of going insane were still high, but at least it was no longer a certainty.

The next step in the process was a rating system of sorts. Entities were graded on how often they positively replied, and how often their replies sent the people doing the deciphering insane. The most benign of the lot was organized into a list, and eventually recognized as the Orthodox Divines. I could never remember who those gods were though, since I never bothered praying to any of them.

The final piece of the puzzle that made the entire process more or less safe was the office of the Operator. Under the old system, the person making the prayer had to be the one deciphering the message. No one else could do it, period. What changed was a breakthrough in the algorithm used by the automated process. Now a complete third party could risk his mind for your sake. What made this a preferable state of affairs was that insanity rates absolutely plummeted when the Operators were brought in. The prevalent theory for this is since the Operators have no personal connection with the prayer, their minds have sufficient distance to avoid going completely nutso.

Once the junk packet had been deciphered, it would be converted into a sound file by the Operator who would then pipe the noise into a sound proofed room occupied by the prayer's original maker. This whole sequence would originally take weeks to complete, but the advancement of technology never stops. Its now possible to fire off a prayer to favorite Orthodox Divine, get the response immediately, have your Operator decipher it in probably half an hour, and go home satisfied.

Or not. Some divines are fond of replying with rude language if they feel their time was wasted. At least its not curses. The nastier entities on the list had that particular bad habit.

The chorus is basically one big extended prayer to the Orthodox Divines. The reason why I'm the Operator in charge of the chorus is simple. Its also the reason why I get harassed by randos asking me to grant them transmission time on my tower. I am the only currently serving Operator who has lasted in this job for three years and running.

Low risk does not mean no risk. Seventy percent of prospective Operators fail the initial screening. Of those that pass, a third of the cohort will begin to lose mental stability within half a year. The rest will be able to hold on to their marbles for two years at most before growing incompetent. And as an Operator becomes increasingly mentally feeble, the strength of the blessing he deciphers for you wanes as well. You want an Operator who is refreshingly sane, and not talking in tongues. I may talk smack on the job, but its more proof that my mind has not deteriorated the slightest.

So yeah, no one is going to touch me. That girl Olivia just threw out could even be the daughter of the Leader and it would make zero difference.

Besides, I doubt anyone is going to have much of an opportunity to complain about me today. It should be starting around, right about now, by my estimate.

The alarm blares to life drowning everything else out. There we go. Right on time.

"Attention. Fallen detected landing on the coast." The PA system drones, "Ninth Valkyrie squadron, Third and Fifteenth Militia Companies report for duty."

I kick back and yawn tiredly. None of my business. Absolutely none at all.